Recently I participated in a bicycle ride, the Colorado Triple Bypass, which is a 120-mile ride with 10,000 feet of elevation gain, over three mountain-passes…all in one day! I’ve already posted on some of the experiences that I had in working with my mind while preparing for this endeavor.

One challenge I didn’t share was my experience of doubt while training. When encountering my doubt, I came to realize that it was such a great lesson for me that it may be of some use to readers of this blog.

There are many reasons that people meditate. Some meditate to relieve stress, while others do so to gain inner peace. There are no hard and fast rules about why one should meditate. I practice meditation for many reasons, but most of all to access an aspect of my mind that is free from distractions, unaltered, and more of the “who” that I am than anything else.

In my practice, I’ve encountered numerous obstacles and have learned to work with many of them. Perhaps one of the most “sticky” of these obstacles has been doubt. In my experience, the doubt that I’ve encountered while meditating is often based on self-doubt. Can this work for me? Am I doing this the right way? Does meditation even work? What am I doing here?

What I forget at these times is that it’s not so much about whether the technique is or is not going to work. In fact, meditation is more about letting go of doing and just being, letting go of our hopes and fears, letting go of our expectations, and just learning to be with what is, in a non-judgmental and open way.

Getting back to the ride; I’d just completed part of my training ride, going from Evergreen over Juniper Pass to Georgetown, and was about to climb back up over Juniper the other way. I was tired, my legs ached a bit, and I clearly remembered the wonderful and steep descent off of Juniper that I was now ascending. For some reason, my thoughts wandered to “What the heck am I doing?” I began to doubt my resolve in being able to get back up over the pass.

At that moment, I remembered the words of Sogyal Rinpoche who said that the great meditation masters “don’t do doubt.” I thought about it and realized the power of that phrase. Bringing my mind back to the present and anchoring it on the circling motion of my legs, I began chugging up Juniper Pass to the mantra of, “I don’t do doubt,” and easily made it over the top.

How do we not do doubt? When learning to meditate, how do we engage with what arises without being taken over by it?

First, we recognize all that arises within our mind to be transient and temporary. Whenever a thought or sensation arises, no matter what arises – even doubt – we see it as nothing more than a passing phenomenon, much as we would if we were watching clouds go by in the sky.

Next, we recognize that all of our beliefs about our thoughts are based on our habit of endlessly applying meaning to whatever arises within our mind. That is, we think about our thoughts! In fact, as we become more experienced with meditation, we discover that left on their own, our thoughts have no more power or meaning than do the clouds in the sky. It’s only our thinking, “ I don’t like that thought,” or, “Wow, that was brilliant!” that gets us into the bind of taking our thoughts seriously.

After that, we remember to bring our attention back to the moment instead of getting caught up in our doubt. For me, it was about remembering that I was riding up over Juniper Pass, enjoying the fact that my 53-year-old body was capable of performing such a feat! We practice remembering the moment by learning to use an object of focus, perhaps our breath, and anchoring our attention on that object.

Finally, we practice again and again, over and over, through successes and failures until we’ve learned to stabilize our mind. The only reason that I was able to bring my mind back to the ride during a period of intense physical exertion was because I’d practiced doing so repeatedly, over many rides. No magic, just repetition!

So, from now on, whenever you’re practicing your meditation…or anything for that matter, when doubts arise, bring your attention to the present, and say “I don’t do doubt!!” Who knows, it may disappear from your mind…at least at that moment. 😉

I hope that this helps. Please feel free to share your comments on this site. Let me and others know what situations you find yourself in when you find yourself encountering doubt. And, as always, please feel free to contact me if you’d like to see additional content or other discussions on this site.

For more information on how to meditate, exercises in working with the breath, and other nifty stuff, please see the Related Posts below. Also, don’t forget to download the free ebook, Can Meditation Change the Way that You View Your World?, for help with getting started in you meditation practice.

Also, stay tuned for a new ebook coming soon; How to Work with the Four Distractions to Meditation.

NEW – this site has a new page, Meditation Resources, where you can find articles, MP3 tracks for downloading, and videos on the subject of meditation.